WisDOT delays costly project, Delafield says, 'good'

Well, well, well, whaddya know: after years of Wisconsin over-spending and over-building on highway projects as the roads we have continue to pit and crumble - - and while phony conservative at the State Capitol are scrambling to find even more hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and debt to throw the road-builders' way - - one conservative community in the heart of conservative Waukesha County is saying one expensive interchange expansion should be shelved for a long time:

State highway officials are planning to delay by at least a year the expansion of the Highways 83 and 16 interchange because of highway repair and reconstruction spending cuts in the recently adopted 2015-17 state biennial budget. 

The announcement of a delay in the construction of such a large project — this one is estimated at $7.5 million to nearly $10 million — sometimes will prompt howls of protest from local officials, but that is not the case this time. 

Some Delafield officials have been highly critical of the project, arguing that it is too big and too expensive considering the existing interchange is barely six years old.

This is not the first time that exurbanites west of Milwaukee have worked to put the brakes on runaway WisDOT spending, and a federal court has found some of these arguments compelling.